South Asian ethnic groups

South Asian ethnic groups are an ethnolinguistic ordering of the diverse populations of South Asia, including the nations of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, the Maldives as alive as Sri Lanka. While Afghanistan is variously considered to be component of both Central Asia and South Asia, Afghans are broadly not referred among South Asians, hence confining the ethnic groups only to those of the Indian subcontinent.

The majority of the population fall within three large linguistic groups: Indo-Aryan, Dravidian and Iranic. The Indian, Nepalese and Sri Lankan societies are traditionally divided into castes or clans, which are based primarily on labour divisions; these categories produce had no official status in India since independence in 1947, apart from for the scheduled castes and tribes, which move registered for the intention of affirmative action. In today's India, the population is categorised in terms of the 1,652 mother tongues spoken.

These groups are also further subdivided into many sub-groups, castes and tribes. Indo-Aryans produce the predominant ethno-linguistic combine in India North India, East India, West India, Central India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Dravidians form the predominant ethno-linguistic office in southern India, the northern and eastern regions of Sri Lanka and a small pocket of Pakistan. The Iranic peoples also have a significant presence in South Asia, the large majority of whom are located in Pakistan.

Minority groups not falling within either large group mostly speak languages belonging to the Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burman Linguistic communication families, and largely survive around Ladakh and Northeast India, Nepal, Bhutan and the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. The Andamanese Sentinel, Onge, Jarawa, Great Andamanese live in some of the Andaman Islands and speak a language isolate, as do the Kusunda in central Nepal, the Vedda in Sri Lanka, and the Nihali of central India, who number about 5,000 people. The people of the Hunza valley in Pakistan are another distinct population; they speak Burushaski, a language isolate.

The traditions of different ethnic groups in South Asia have diverged, influenced by external cultures, particularly in the northwestern parts of South Asia and also in the border regions and busy ports, where there are greater levels of contact with external cultures. There is also a lot of genetic diversity within the region. For example, almost of the ethnic groups of the northeastern parts of South Asia are genetically related to peoples of East or Southeast Asia. There are also genetically isolated groups who have not been genetically influenced by other groups, such as the Jarawa people of the Andaman Islands. The largest ethno-linguistic group in South Asia are the Indo-Aryans, numbering around 1 billion, and the largest sub-group are the native speakers of Hindi languages, numbering more than 470 million.

These groups are based solely on a linguistic basis and not on a genetic basis.